The Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Committee voted 16-8 in early June to adopt a platform amendment calling for the complete abolition of police and prisons in the United States. That wasn't the controversial part. The controversial part is that it was one of the less radical items on the agenda.
The full platform is called "Workers Deserve More." It reads like a to-do list for dismantling America.
The DSA's 120,000-member organization spent two months drafting a document that proposes abolishing the U.S. Senate, eliminating the Electoral College, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies "chosen by and subordinate to Congress," defunding what they call the "Department of War," closing all overseas military bases, ending economic sanctions on Iran, Cuba, and Russia, granting universal amnesty to all immigrants, abolishing ICE, and designating Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. The Palestine and ranked-choice voting amendments passed unanimously. The "real democracy" amendment — the one that guts the executive and judicial branches — passed by what the DSA's own members described as a "razor-thin margin."
Cliff Connolly of the DSA's Marxist Unity Group explained the logic. "We're never going to have democracy or socialism in the United States as long as the president and the Supreme Court exist," he said. Just a casual Tuesday for a guy whose caucus has "Marxist" in the name.
NPC co-chair Ashik Siddique acknowledged that abolishing the Senate is "pretty radical." Hazel Williams of the Red Star Caucus called prison abolition a "basic socialist demand." Sarah Milner from the Reform & Revolution caucus conceded the language might be "off-putting for people" — which is one way to describe a platform that proposes dismantling the constitutional structure of the world's oldest republic.
And then there's Zohran Mamdani.
The DSA's most prominent elected official — now the mayor of New York City — sat across from Jon Stewart recently and was asked point-blank whether he's comfortable with his party's position on abolishing prisons and borders. His answer was a dodge wrapped in a bumper sticker: "If you have more than one socialist in a room and there isn't disagreement, then you don't have more than one socialist in a room."
Stewart, to his credit, wasn't buying it. He pressed again. Mamdani said he was "comfortable with disagreement" — but never actually disagreed. This is the same man who said in 2020, about prisons, "Frankly, what purpose do they serve?"
The New York Times asked Mamdani if he'd ever visited the U.S.-Mexico border. His answer was one word: "No."
The man running America's largest city, backed by an organization that wants to grant universal amnesty to every person who crossed that border illegally, has never been there. Never stood in the Rio Grande Valley. Never talked to a rancher in Eagle Pass. Never visited a town where fentanyl has hollowed out a generation. But he signed an executive order reaffirming New York's sanctuary status on his first day in office.
The platform is set for its full public debut at the DSA's "Socialists Summit" in Chicago later this month. The organization is targeting Senate seats. They're running candidates. They have a ground game in every major city and a mayor who won't say the word "border" without a lawyer present.
The DSA didn't hide the manifesto. They published it. They debated amendments on the floor. They voted on abolishing the prison system and won 16-8. They want to eliminate the branch of government that confirms Supreme Court justices and ratifies treaties, and replace the presidency with a committee.
Most political movements at least pretend to respect the Constitution while they work around it. These folks skipped the pretense and put it in writing.
